Often when researching a new genre or business idea, it’s very easy to become discouraged by how outright difficult some terms may appear, however even if that special term you have your heart set on developing for looks too difficult, don’t despair - look for long tail terms!
What is a long tail search term?
Long tail is said to signify a large number of words in a search phrase. The idea is that when a person searches for the word “car”, they are looking for very general information, but if the searcher becomes more specific and uses more words, then they likely already have all the “general” information and are now looking for very specific information or are actively looking to buy something! So, instead of searching for “car”, they would search for “2004 Ford 150 carburator”.
This is great, because more often than not, the general search terms have been over-saturated; these more specific terms, while having less traffic, are more likely to convert into sales! This opens up avenues for SEO as well as Pay Per Click marketing that would otherwise be outside of your ability to rank.
What’s even better is that statistics are showing that today’s web surfer is actually getting more web savvy, and is using multiple words to find the information and products they want.
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July 2006 |
July 2005 |
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| 1. | 2 word phrases | 28.91% | 1. | 2 word phrases | 29.60% | |
| 2. | 3 word phrase | 27.85% | 2. | 3 word phrase | 27.55% | |
| 3. | 4 word phrases | 17.11% | 3. | 4 word phrases | 16.21% | |
| 4. | 1 word phrases | 11.43% | 4. | 1 word phrases | 13.42% | |
| 5. | 5 word phrases | 8.25% | 5. | 5 word phrases | 7.58% | |
| 6. | 6 word phrases | 3.68% | 6. | 6 word phrases | 3.21% | |
| 7. | 7 word phrases | 1.59% | 7. | 7 word phrases | 1.34% | |
These stats are from a Onestat.com press release comparing July 2005 with July 2006 to see how search terms are evolving.
Looking at the chart above, we can easily see that every category from 3-word search terms to massive 7-word search terms have experienced noticeable growth. While the actual percentage of each category may seem small, try to keep in mind we are talking a market of over 6 billion searches every month in the United States alone - which means even a tiny increase of .25% means an actual growth of over 15 million searches!
So when you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together, it really is worth taking a closer look at your keywords - it’s as easy as downloading Good keywords and doing a simple overture search.
April 2nd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
So you are saying to use long tailed search terms as your topic of the post? Or just think of long tailed terms to use in your text?
April 3rd, 2007 at 3:07 am
Glenn,
The current generally accepted procedure in SEO is to target your homepage to your primary term and then create subpages that target no more then 2-3 terms (preferably 2).
To answer your question more specifically if possible you should make it your page title/post title and try and include it as well in your text.
Whenever possible you can also get creative with your page title, as an example if your page is titled “professional search engine marketing services” you are optimizing for “search engine marketing”, “professional search engine marketing”, “search engine marketing services” and the full term “professional search engine marketing services” all in one page heading.
I hope that answered your question Glenn :)
April 3rd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
[…] Dave and Jay - Crazy Web Entrepreneurs is a loosely related blog about web entrepreneurship. After reading some of their recent postings on flipping web sites and the long tail of search terms, I’m looking forward to reading more from them. Their articles are well written, and, like my own blog, their site is still a work-in-progress, which I appreciate. They are also not without a sense of humor, which can only add to the experience. […]